Partnerships should be embarked on a case-by-case basis and should draw, where applicable, on previous experience.

The Committee’s analysis strongly suggests that partnerships do make positive contributions in the right circumstances. Determining what those circumstances are and what type of partnership would be most appropriate represents a constructive challenge for policy makers. There is no “one size fits all” solution. Additional research—through intermittent comparisons and evaluations—could advance our understanding of the conditions for successful public-private partnerships.

Partnerships that are appropriately constructed and carefully and regularly evaluated offer society a proven means of enhancing both the welfare of our citizens and the security of the nation.

National policy with regard to partnerships should be flexible, fostering a culture of experimentation. It should include, as appropriate, features such as industry initiation (i.e., a bottom-up, not a top-down approach), industry leadership, defined limits to public commitments of resources, clear objectives, cost sharing, and learning through ongoing evaluation of the experiences of previous and current partnerships both in the United States and abroad.

Strengthening public support for research in physics, chemistry, mechanical and electrical engineering, and materials science and engineering should be a national priority. These disciplines underpin continued advances in information technology, a source of economic growth, and are essential for continued progress in the area of health care through information technology-based advances in biomedicine.

Significant increases in funding for physical sciences and engineering— including material sciences, chemistry, physics, and electrical engineering—are needed to build greater understanding of properties of nanostructures underpinning tomorrow’s information industries as well to capitalize on advances in biotechnology.20

Renewed policy attention is required to encourage cooperative research in information technologies, the disciplines that support them, and in

That means by 1975, the number of components per integrated circuit for minimum cost will be 65,000.” See also, Gordon E. Moore, “The Continuing Silicon Technology Evolution Inside the PC Platform,” Intel Developer Update, Issue 2, October 15, 1997, where he notes that he “first observed the ‘doubling of transistor density on a manufactured die every year’ in 1965, just four years after the first planar integrated circuit was discovered. The press called this ‘Moore’s Law’ and the name has stuck. To be honest, I did not expect this law to still be true some 30 years later, but I am now confident that it will be true for another 20 years.”

20

See the recommendations and findings in National Research Council, Capitalizing on New Needs and New Opportunities, Government-Industry Partnerships in Biotechnology and Information Technologies, op.cit.